Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Jesus Harper and the Not So Miraculous Surplus

It looked like a scene in that sordid B-movie, The Rise and Fall of Jesus Harper.The one where the Oily Messiah takes a fishy deficit and miraculously turns it into a tiny surplus.Stephen Harper seemed to have some extra spring in his step Monday after struggling on a variety of fronts in what has been a tough campaign so far. The reason? News that the government posted a surprise $1.9-billion surplus in 2014-15 — bringing the country’s books back into balance a year earlier than expected.Only to have it revealed that he is no Jesus, and it was no miracle.Conservative Leader Stephen Harper on Monday defended federal departments for holding on to billions of dollars last year. The unspent money was instead returned to the federal treasury, and played a huge role in the Conservative government posting a $1.9-billion budget surplus in the last fiscal year.The PBO figures aren’t final as not all departments, agencies and Crown corporations have reported their full end-of-year spending. But they do suggest hundreds of millions set aside for new military equipment, processing refugee applications, First Nations communities and transportation infrastructure went unspent.The shabby Con artist had simply squeezed $8 BILLION out of government departments like a boa constrictor, left the military in the lurch, and desperate refugees on the beach. And had even stolen money from dirt poor native communities, just to pad his grubby surplus.But then what do you expect? He does want to prove that government doesn't work so he can kill it more easily. And he did learn all he knows about running the PMO bouncing up and down on the knees of Ol' Brucie Carson...

Who as we know isn't exactly the best role model or teacher.A former top aide to Prime Minister Stephen Harper was trying to help a girlfriend leave her escort past behind when he got involved in trying to persuade the government to buy water systems from a company that employed her, a court heard Monday.Bruce Carson has pleaded not guilty to a charge of influence peddling in a trial that Harper's opponents are using to question the prime minister's judgment in making appointments.But it is hard to decide whether Harper is Carson's best or worst pupil. For although he still does try to lie like a Con artist.Harper sidestepped questions about the trial on Monday, telling reporters in Kamloops, B.C. that the allegations are against someone who left his office long ago.
"This concerns an individual's actions as a private citizen after he left government," Harper said.He is still getting caught.After leaving the Prime Minister’s Office, from his perch in Calgary, Bruce Carson still had direct access to Harper government ministers and their senior staff who gladly entertained his attempts to promote an Ottawa company’s water filtration system as a quick fix for First Nation communities hard hit by water woes, evidence submitted during his criminal trial shows.

And one thing is for sure. Neither that, nor his phoney budget surplus will help his image. It will only make him look even more like a sleazy Con artist.And fuel the desire for change in a country where a new poll suggests it's already hitting record levels.The mood of the country continued to deteriorate and the desire for change grew since our last wave of surveying. Today, just 32% say the country is heading in the right direction, a drop of 18 points since last December and the lowest we have measured since we began tracking this item in March 2014.Which almost certainly means that even his tinny surplus won't save him.No matter what he says...

Or how crazy he sounds.Especially when it's pointed out that by keeping so much money out of circulation for crass political purposes, he may have helped drive the country into another recession...

So that only a hopeless Con, or an absolute idiot, can still believe that he's Great Economist Leader. Or believe ANYTHING he says.And the bad news?Judging from the way Harper and his greasy monkey Joe Oliver cooked the books to get that surplus...

If the Cons can't cancel, or prorogue the election...

They will try to STEAL it.So we are going to have to work really hard to make sure we crush them beyond recognition.For it should be clear by now that NOTHING in this country will be safe, not our money nor our freedoms.Until that sleazy gang are evicted from power. Or arrested.And their grotesque Con artist leader is sent to the place where he belongs...

23 comments:

Bruce Carson should be a poster boy for all that is wrong and corrupt with the Harper government. This one scandal in its own right is enough to bring down most governments but Harper just seems to get away with shrugging it off by saying " What who me no one told me!". A convicted felon working for the PMO and lobbying for a 20% cut on a water purification contract was bad enough but his subsequent stint as the executive director of the Canada School of Energy and the Environment was atrocious. The school was funded by over 30 million tax payer dollars and set up to study clean energy such as carbon capture. Carson turned it into a powerful industry backed lobby group. So effectively the Cons were pushing the tar sands to government legislative departments from the top down while Carson and affiliates were pushing from the outside and inside. The overall implication is that any federal control or legislation to do with the environment, pipeline or rail safety, health effects etc has to be somewhat suspect. Our federal scientists and legislators are trustworthy people but they had to be working under enormous pressure to err on the side of political expediency. More details can be found at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_CarsonRT

hi RT...Stephen Harper has always had an attraction for unsavoury characters, one that goes back to his early days in the Reform Party. I can only attribute this to the fact that he is a clinical psychopath, for whom the end always justifies the means. And likes to see his own callous lack of respect for others reflected back to him by the behaviour of others. What else could justify his undying love for Jenni Byrne.But hopefully that behaviour will give Canadians a better idea of who he really is, and he will pay for it on election day...

Well around here they are almost all on public property. Not many residents have one. In fact, I'm not sure I have seen even one Con sign on someone's yard.

The thing is, the Harper base is generally immune to reason or, even ,self-interest. They "believe" in Harper and his mission. Of course repeated racist/anti-religious attacks on muslems just helps scare them even closer to their Leader who will protect them.

hi Kathleen ...it is shameful indeed. As I was ashamed when I saw some Con propaganda jammed into my door, and since it had been there for hours, worried that some neighbour might see it, and think I was one of THEM... ;)

The Cons planned this budget surplus a year in advance. They wanted to roll out an "unexpected" surplus this year to show that Harper is a great economic leader during the election. While doing so they faked planned spending in a number of areas. For example the Cons promised the people in Surrey BC, where there are 4 battleground ridings and the electorate is plagued by drive by shootings, that they would add 100 new positions to the RCMP in Surrey detachment. Only 6 were actually added. The RCMP budget was 300 Million under spent adding to the surplus.

hi John...you're right they did plan it, and I can only hope the opposition parties expose their scam and point out the damage they have done to the RCMP, the military, our veterans, our native people etc etc. For then their surplus will be seen for what it really is, and Harper and his sleazy gang will look more like Con artists than economists....

Today on CBC Newsworld, we learned more about the kinds of voters who support Harper - Indo-Canadians and Chinese Canadians described as "one-issue" voters who can't bring themselves to vote for the NDP or the Liberals on the issue of spending alone.

The other large group - the base - we are better acquainted with - the evangelicals, ideologues, the "I've got mine - screw you" types. The illiterate. The Earl Cowans of all ages.

With these two large groups supporting Harper, he could very well pull off 39.1% again, or at least enough for a minority government.

Young people could be the single-best positioned among all Canadians to throw a wrench in those dastardly works.

I am a Chinese Canadian. Where are all these Chinese Canadians who are supposedly Harper voters? The large majority of Chinese Canadians that I know did not vote for Harper since 2006 and would not be voting for Harper because they are aware of his lies, deceit and incompetence. In fact they are wondering who are the voters who are supporting Harper and why they cannot see through his bad policies, divisiveness and deceit.

The one Chinese guy I know who admitted voting for Harper in 2011 had told me he regretted it and would never be voting for him again. I am not saying that there are no Chinese Canadians who vote for him: only that they must be those I am not acquainted with. :)

BTW, unless Harper gets away with cheating again big time, he will not get anywhere near 39% votes this time. His polls have been hovering below 30% for a long time and are extremely unlikely to increase as more and more people wake up from their stupor and see through Harper.

There are a large number of Chinese Canadians who vote Con in the Lower Mainland (BC).In fact, Harper caters to them so much he even bypasses mainstream media to be interviewed on the Chinese language TV channel (Vancouver).

hi anon 4:39....yes the Cons have gone out of their way to pander to different ethnic groups in a manner never seen before. But one should remember that who they are reaching out and touching are just some ethnic leaders and their followers. And many people in those groups don't support either those self styled leaders or the Cons. Especially the younger ones. They can see what the Cons are doing, and they are not impressed....

hi anon 8:56...thank you for proving my point.;) As I was saying above many people in those ethnic groups the Cons are targeting can see what they are trying to do, and they are not impressed. So thank you and good for you and your friends. And yes you are right, Harper might manage to squeak out a minority, but it will not save him...

Dear Anonymous Chinese CanadianWe are discussing groups, not individuals.As a group, support for Conservatives among Chinese-Canadians is very strong. http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/canadian-politics/conservative-support-grows-among-chinese-despite-liberal-push-to-regain-ethnic-votershttp://www.nationalobserver.com/2015/07/07/news/how-harper-will-win-electiontwo-thirds of Cantonese-speaking voters backed the Conservatives, which contributed to breakthroughs in ridings in Scarborough and Vancouver.http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/how-courting-the-immigrant-vote-paid-off-for-the-tories/article578608/http://www.straight.com/article-163299/chinese-canadians-election-twoparty-racehttp://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2015/05/15/wooing-the-ethnic-vote.htmlhttp://www.macleans.ca/politics/ottawa/harper-talks-up-the-conservative-grip-on-immigrant-votes/

They care more about money than democracy. More about the bottom line than about Canada.

hi David....yes it's true Harper profits from the ignorance of some Canadians. They do a lot of polling, twist the facts to suit themselves, and they do manage to fool a lot of people. I can only hope that progressives can help educate them in the weeks ahead, especially on the economic front. Because if those voters realize where those incompetents would take us, it will be game over for Harper and his gang....

A week before the election, I'd love to see an open letter to Harper, signed by well-known Tories (such as Joe Clarke, Pat Carney, and Hugh Segal) saying that they will not be voting Con in the election, and list their reasons why they won't be.

Hugh Segal on the State of the Senate and Canadian ConservatismWednesday, December 18, 2013

http://www.cbc.ca/player/Radio/The+Current/ID/2469524240/

Hugh Segal: "Traditional Conservatism is about society, about how people in society connect with each other, what are the underlying values, what are the relationship between the law, human rights, economic freedom, social responsibility. It's a very integrated view of society. It's a very Tory view of society."

"Neo-conservatism, I think is really the aggrandizement of selfishness. It's about me, only me, and after that, me. It's about investing only in things that produce a huge profit for yourself, and it's not about societyas a whole, and it tends to be very insensitive to those people who, for one reason or another, have fallen beneath the poverty line, and its engaged in presumptions that those people are all poor because they arelazy. Neoconservatives believe that fundamentally. The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of Canadians beneath the poverty line in this country actually work. Some of them hold down two jobs, and don't actually get sufficient income in order to meet their basic obligations. So it's a very different view, and I am a traditional Conservative, and I don't apologize for that."

hi David...I wouldn't be surprised if that happens. I think the last weeks of this election campaign will be the most frantic political exercise this country has ever seen. Fasten your seatbelt because we're in for quite a ride....

David and Simon - agree. It's getting much more frenetic and fiery out there. On all chat boards. Everyone is angry. This should have been over this week. And the quality of campaigns and information sharing to date on all fronts has been deplorable. Choppy, inconsistent, spinning. Nothing but messaging clips and sound bites.

The picture at the opening of the post is priceless! To create a surplus all you frequently have to do is stop spending for a while and viola, there is money in the bank. In this case of course, not spending the money impacts negatively on citizens, such as Veterans. we all heard how Steve was going to provide more assistance for Vets, after the election. He could have spent the money there instead and save a few lives. Steve could have provided clean water systems on reserves and saved a lot of kids stomach aches and their families a lot of money by not having to buy bottled water. Steve could have spent the money staffing foreign affairs and immigration so there might be staff to work with refugees. Steve could have sent half of the money to Jordon to help them take care of refugees. steve could have put money back into the anti child porn unit at the RCMP. None of this of course was done because Steve wanted his miracle, getting re elected and to do that he wants to create a surplus.

well not all the dottering old fuckers in his ads are going to give Canadians a good impression about Steve and economics. Seniors who vote for Steve and his gang of crook cons will find themselves with little or not health care come 2017. Those ads saying all those nasty things about Mulcair and Trudeu, well its like this, even if they didn't know about business, they do know if you don't have a decent health care system nothing is going to work all that well in Canada. Most people can't afford private medical insurance and its coming quickly that we will need it. In B.C. some medication is not covered until you have stage 4 cancer. the medication for the first 3 stages, you pay. if you don't have the money, you don't get the meds. So with Steve planning to remove $38 billion from health care, what will go next?

hi e.a.f... thanks, I'm glad you like that photo-shop of Jesus Harper and his oily disciples because I quite enjoyed making it. And of course being able to include Michelle Rempel in it just about made my day ;) But yes, as I said above, I just hope the opposition parties can expose this surplus for the sham it is, and point out what it cost. As well as the fact that by withdrawing $8 billion dollars from the economy they may have put the brakes on an economic recovery that we need so badly....